This
generation is marked by the return to God's involvement in His creation
through the character of Abraham.

Year
1948 – 1812 BCE – Birth of Abram

Terach,
son of Nachor, was 70 years when he begot Abram, Nachor and Haran,
in year 1948.

And
here are the generations of Terach. Terach begot Abram,
Nachor and Haran, and Haran begot Lot. ---
Genesis 10:27

Abram
was the oldest of these three sons. Nachor was named after Terach’s
father, Nachor (the
elder). At the time, the latter was about 100 years old and just had a
few more
years to live because, possibly, he was getting ill, a
condition
unknown to mankind before but that would the result of God’s will to
reduce human lifetime. Terach named his second son, Nachor (the
younger), after
his father in order to influence fate and prolong his name, if
not his
life. Then Terach begot Haran who will be the first of the three sons
to marry
and have a child, Lot.

Abram
is the 20th human generation from Adam, as it is explained in this page
(click here).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Year
1968 – 1792 BCE – Nimrod

At
the time, the city of Ur and the whole region were under
the rule of the first powerful post-Flood man to rise. He built a
kingdom in the
valley of Shinaar, with his capital which he called Babel:

And Cush [son of Cham] begot
Nimrod;
he started to be a ruler (גבר) on earth. He was a ruler (גבר) hunting
in the face of God, and so it is said: "Like Nimrod a
hero (גבור) hunter in the face of God." And the start of his kingdom
was
Babel, then Erekh, then Akkad, then Chalneh in the land of Shinaar.
From that
land, Ashur [son of Shem] came forth and built Nineveh and
Rehovoth-Yir, and
then Resen between Nineveh and Calah’, the big city. --- Genesis 10:8-12

Like his
predecessors, in the
same region than before the Flood,
Nimrod had established new religious beliefs based on idolatry, as it
obviously
served his purpose to rule over the minds and the people by presenting
himself
as guided by these gods. It may be about Nimrod, a grandson from Cham
who was cursed to be a slave to his brothers, that the author of the
Proverbs mentioned:

For three things the earth does quake, and for four it cannot endure:For a slave when he reigns;--- Proverbs, 30:21-22

In the Babylonian history,
one of the greatest
rulers
of these times was Hammurabi who reigned for 42 years.
He is remembered in History as the one who vastly expanded the kingdom
of
Babylon for the first time. This
Hammurabi was most
certainly the Biblical Nimrod. He started to reign in year 1792 BCE and
will reign for a long period of 42 years, until 1750 BCE.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Year
1996 – 1764 BCE – The Code of
Hammurabi

In
the year 1764
BCE, Hammurabi succeeded to repel the threat from the neighbouring Elam
kingdom, thanks to an alliance he made with the states of Southern
Mesopotamia. He then turned against them and absorbed this region to
his realm, conquering the city-states of Ur, Larsa and more. He
established a central power from his capital city of Babylon, the Babel
of the Bible.

Hammurabi is also recorded in
Ancient History as the ruler who first created a new set of laws known
as the Hammurabi’s
Code. This policy probably became a necessity to unify his
realm despite the confusion of languages and customs. His Code was however borrowed
from Ur, a city-state that he had conquered like the rest of the
regions of Mesopotamia. It is in Ur that the parents of
Terach had settled and Hammurabi probably involved their family as
priests for his new
cult.
Terach was the high priest of Ur and the maker of idol statues for the
city cult. His name, Terach, is reminiscent of the word yareach which means 'moon'. His son, Abram, was surely aimed to become his successor in the city priesthood as his name is made of Ab/Av Ram which means 'high father'. Abram's promised wife, his family member Sarai, is reminiscent of the goddess name 'Astarte'. another family member, Laban, had his name derived from Lavan
which means 'white' as a reminder of the Moon. All these details concur
to show the priesthood role of Abram's family in the city of Ur. [1]

It is from this family of local rulers and priests that Hammurabi took the concept of
codification of
laws. Indeed, the oldest recorded code of laws came from Ur, not from
Babylon, and is called the Code
of
Ur-Nammu. It was created around 2100 BCE by the
founder of the Dynasty of Ur that was started after the Flood.

The
court of Ur-Nammu, ca. 2100 BCE, with the Moon as a god

Hammurabi surely thought that
this idea of a code would greatly help
him consolidate his newly
conquered and vast kingdom.

Where
did this idea of codifying some "laws" came from? According
to Jewish tradition, Noah established rules,
dictated by God, for his sons and descendants to follow after the
Flood, before they
went to scatter on earth. These so-called Noachide Laws
included the command not to
murder a man, directly commanded by God to all mankind:

Whoever
sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be
shed.---
Genesis 9:6
And it happens that this
divine commandment to the generation of Noah and his sons is
the first
rule of the Code of Ur-Nammu. At the time of this code of Ur, around
2100 BCE, the living patriarch was Arpachshad, son of Shem. He was the
one who founded the post-Flood Ur. So he had
learned first hand, from his father Shem and grandfather Noah the
divine
commandments to mankind. His family followed this code, called the Noachide Laws.

In fact, these ancient codes of Mesopotamia emulated
the Noachide Laws
and extended them to punish a transgressor for the
same act that he did. As
Hammurabi/Nimrod wanted to show himself as the greatest ruler of all
times, even above the gods (and God), and make a
name for him, he did created his own code of laws. And he
did so by impressing his contemporaries by asserting that his laws were
dictated by God:

In
the prologue to his code, Hammurabi declares himself
appointed by Enlil,[3]
to make a
justice that will prevail over the land. Further, in the code, the
concept of an
eye for an eye and of a
tooth for a tooth is also stated (code articles 196 and
200 respectively), a concept which also guided the Noachide Laws. This
type of
law was known in Canaan too, as a recent discovery in the ancient city
of
Hazor, Northern Israel, has demonstrated.[4]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hammurabi
on his throne (Musée du Louvre)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Year
1996 – 1764 BCE – The Tower of Babel

Then
Hammurabi
went too far in his quest of grandeur. In Babylon, he decided to
erect a
tower high up to reach the sky:

And
it was that all the earth was one language and common
matters. And it was that they travelled from where they were and found
a valley
in the land of Shinaar. They settled there. And one man said to
another: “Come,
let us make bricks and burn them in fire.” And the bricks served them
as
stones, and the bitumen served them as mortar. And they said: “Come;
let us
build a city and a tower with its head in the sky. And this will make
us a
name, lest we would be dispersed on the face of the earth.”God
came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of
Adam had built. God said: “Behold, they are one people with one
language for
all of them, and this is what they started to do. And now, they will
not
fortify from all what they have initiated to do. Come, let us descend
and let
us confuse there their language, so that one would not understand the
language
from another.” And
God
dispersed them from there on the face of the earth,
and they stopped building the city. This is why it was called Babel
(בבל) because there God confused (בלל) the language of the whole earth
and from
there God scattered them on the face of the whole earth. ---
Genesis 11:2-9

The common matters
of
the text may refer to the Code
imposed by Hammurabi to unify the rules of the world. In the same
effort of centralized power, rulers of this generation feared that God
will punish them and disperse them on the face of the Earth.

The
confusion of the languages has been recorded by ancient civilizations,
not just the Bible. For example, the epic of Enmerkar, a legendary
ruler who reigned or lived for 900 years (this is probably to say that
the composition of the epic probably spread over this long period of
time), mentions the various languages and expressed the wish to return
to one common one:

At such a
time, may the lands of Šubur and Ḫamazi, the
many-tongued, and Sumer, the great mountain of the me of
magnificence, and Akkad, the land possessing all that is
befitting, and the Martu land [Amorites], resting in security
-- the whole universe, the well-guarded people -- may they all
address Enlil together in a single language!For
at that time, for the ambitious lords, for the ambitious princes, for
the ambitious kings,Enki, for the ambitious lords, for the ambitious
princes, for the ambitious kings, for the ambitious lords, for the
ambitious princes, for the ambitious kings -- Enki, the lord of
abundance and of steadfast decisions, the wise and knowing lord of the
Land, the expert of the gods, chosen for wisdom, the lord
of Eridug, shall change the speech in their mouths, as many as he had placed there, and so the speech of mankind is truly one.""--- Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, lines 134-155, to read text online click here

This
generation was evil but wiser than the generation of the Flood. They
feared that God will use fire this time against mankind, after having
used water. This led a Jewish rabbi from Medieval Spain to comment
around 1300 CE:

There is a wise explanation to it:
people of tower generation were villains versed in wisdom. They built a
city and a tower to save from fire flood as they had already seen the
ruin of the world from water flood and were afraid. They decided to
build a tower to rescue
with its help; if He brings fire flood and burns the world down, the
fire won’t
get close to them. This is what is meant in midrash telling us about
the war on
heaven – they have audaciously opposed the will of the Blessed. They
decided to
tie up a part of fire so that it could not get to the city. In our
generation, we
also know some wise men who know the power, which ties up a portion of
lightning so that it could be exhibited only within a certain scope.--- Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa, Commentary of the Torah

What Bahya meant is the following: if God would
sent to them fire to burn down their city, the tower would serve as a
giant lightning rod that would protect the city from destruction and
its people from dispersion. Thus this commentator from medieval times
suggests that the Ancients had knowledge of the lightning rod as
protection of the buildings against the fire coming from heavens. This
knowledge was ultimately "discovered" by Benjamin Franklin in 1752 when
he flew a kite in a thundering storm.

The event of
the Tower of Babel and the subsequent dispersion took
place in the year
1996, the year when Peleg died in Ur. He was soon followed by Nachor
the elder
who died there in 1997. Lot, son of
Haran, was probably born at that time. What happened with this
family?

The generations from the Flood
to Babel

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Year
1996 – 1764 BCE – The
sacrifice of Haran

Nachor
the elder, like his father Sherug, were important men of
the city-state of Ur, probably priests for the city idol gods.
His son
Terach was
probably asked to sacrifice his new-born grandson Lot in order
to
please the gods after
these unexpected deaths of the elders (Nachor and Sherug) at a time
when men lived much longer lives (such as Arpachshad, the probable
founder of Ur,[5]
being still alive). Their early deaths were perceived as a punishment
from the gods and this required sacrifice to appease them. Sherug,
Terach’s grand-father, was still alive and demanded this sacrifice from
his own family, after the deaths of
both his father and his son and maybe out of the fear that death will
also come after him soon.

But
Lot’s father, Haran, the younger brother of Abram, preferred to give
his life instead
of offering his son, and accepted the sacrifice in his place. This is
why the
text says:

And Haran died in front of
his father Terach in the land
where he was born, in Ur-Kasdim.--- Genesis 11:28
The specific
mention in
front of his father Terach meant that he died by
the hands of his father, in a sacrificial event that was
forced upon him.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Year
2000 – 1760 BCE – Start of
a new era for mankind

Two
millennia had
passed since the Creation. These millennia
were devoted to the emergence of mankind, made at the image of God. But
most of it was failure as people turned away from God.

Yet
there was hope.
Abram came to the world and was now 52 years
old: this age represents twice the numerical value of God's name
(26). The next two millennia will witness the
emergence of a new
era where the "path of God" will emerge after the first dark ages of
mankind. The Jewish Sages generally consider that Abram started to
teach the Torah (its principles) at that time. The sacrifical death of
Haran must have been this trigger, to correct the path of
ill-doing.

And indeed, Terach must
have felt guilt for sacrificing his
youngest son who was the only one of his three sons to have taken a
wife and had children, and who himself preferred to spare the life of
his own son Nachor. So he decided
to correct the matters and to leave the land of his fathers:

And
he [Terach] took women for Abram and Nachor [the
younger]; Abram’s wife was called
Sarai, and Nachor’s wife was called Milca, daughter of
Haran, father of Milca and father of Yisca. And Sarai was sterile, and
she did
not have a child. And
Terach took his son Abram, and his grandson Lot, son of
Haran, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, wife of his son Abram, and they
left
Ur-Kasdim together to go to the land of Canaan; and they arrived at
Charan, and
settled there. ---
Genesis 11:29-31

So just before
his departure from
the
city of Ur, Terach took wives for his two remaining sons, Abram and
Nachor. Sarai was a daughter of Terach from another wife, so was a
half-sister of Abram.[6]
As of Milca, the Biblical text explains that she was the daughter of
Haran, brother of Abram and Nachor. So Nachor was given his niece, who
was the sister of Lot. According to some commentators, Sarai and Yisca
was the same
person. But this would be in contradiction with the further explanation
from Abram that Sarai was his half-sister and that Yisca was the
daughter of Haran, Abram's brother.

Terach had the intent to go to Canaan because,
presumably, he wanted to return to the tradition and religion of his
ancestor,
Shem, who was still alive and living in the land of Canaan. But he
stopped half
way, in the north of the Mesopotamian region, in a place where he
decided to
settle: he named this place Charan, after the name of his sacrificed
son Haran.[7]
The two names are written as follows in Hebrew: הָרָן for Haran the son,
and חָרָן for Charan the
place. The difference is in one letter, ה and ח,
which is the same difference of letter for Chametz and Matzah,
the
two different breads mentioned during the Jewish festival of Passover:
the former (Chametz) represents the corrupted Nature and the second
(Matzah) the pure Nature. The clear message is that, although he
started with good intent, Terach stopped on his way to redemption, and
remained in the sin.

Year
2006 – 1754 BCE – Death of
Noah

Noah
died 350 years
after the Flood: this was the Hebrew year 2006.
He enjoyed greater longevity than people who came after him as he died
at the age of 950. In Canaan, Shem was still alive and will remain
alive until he would be able to pass the knowledge of God onto a
spiritual heir, who will be Abram.

Year
2010 – 1750 BCE – Death of
Hammurabi

After
Hammurabi’s death in 1750 BCE (Hebrew year 2010), his
son Samsu-Iluna succeeded him. The powerful kingdom
of Babylon
then started to show signs of
weakness when several city-states started to rebel against the central
power in the course of several years.
Some large regions, such as Elam and Assur, managed to obtain relative
independence
with their own king, but remained vassals and allies of Babylon.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Year
2022 – 1737 BCE – God
speaks to Abram

At
the end of the Hebrew year 2022, in Charan, God spoke to Abram, the
first man He spoke to since He had instructed Noah and his
sons them to
populate the earth after the Flood and when He gave them the basic laws
of human behaviour (the Noachide
Laws).

God
said to Abram: "Go for yourself, from your land, from
your relatives, and from the house of your father, to the land I will
show you.
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will
make a
great name of you, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those
who will
bless you, and him who will curse I will curse him, and all the
families of
mankind will be blessed with you."And
Abram went when God spoke to him, and Lot went with him.
Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Charan. And Abram took
with him his
wife
Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all their properties that they acquired and
the soul
that they made in Charan. And
they left to go to the land of Canaan, and they arrived
to the land of Canaan. Abram passed in the land until the site of
Shechem until
Elon Moreh, and the Canaanite was then in the land. And
God appeared to Abram and said: "To your offspring I will
give this land." And he built there an altar for God who appeared to
him. --- Genesis 12:1-7

Abram
was ready to receive God’s word because, there in Charan, he had
made
a soul, different from the house of his father.
This is why God told
him Go for yourself
because Abram was ready to find the answers about
existence that he asked himself. Then God talked to him, to guide him.

Abram
made immediate preparation to leave as God had commanded him. And he
left with his wife and nephew Lot, and left Charan when he was 75 years
old, thus in year 2023. The difference of year is due to the fact that,
according to Tradition and confirmed by this text, Abram was born on a
1st Tishri, so the beginning of a New Year. So he left Charan when he was 75 years old
means he left on the 1st of Tishri 2023. God spoke to him a few days
previously, in the last days of the month of Elul 2022. This pattern is
also found in the Creation, when God created the world in Six Days, the
six last days of Elul, and made Adam on the 7th, which was the first of
Tishri. There is a parallel in both births, Adam and Abram. They were
also buried in the same place, as shall be seen later.

The
calculation that God spoke to Abram in the last days of Elul 2022 is a
good assumption because it makes the count of 26 years from the
Dispersion (Tower of
Babel). The number of 26 is indicative of God's influence on events. Both Hebrew years, end
of 2022 and beginning of 2023, correspond to 1737 BCE.

Abram and his wife had settled in the south
of the
land of Canaan, at the edge of the desert of the Negev (Genesis 12:9), away from the
Canaanite
neighbours who may otherwise have caused them trouble.

A famine
soon desolated the
land of Canaan. This was the hot season of the summer 2023 AM. It was a trial for Abram, but he and his
wife moved down to Egypt to sojourn there (Genesis 12:10). This was a sin,
because
God had extracted Abram with the wish for him to settle in the land I will show you.
But within the year of his arrival, Abram had already left ! The day
when he entered Egypt was probably on 10 Tishri 2024, because that day
is later chosen as a day of repentance (Yom Kipur) from the sins of the
year that just completed.

But
can one human defy God's designs? The famine that havocked the land of
Canaan also affected
Egypt which was weakened by reductions in the Nile levels at
the time. In addition, the country
passed through political instability at the end of
the 12th
Dynasty which left no heir.

A new Dynasty,
the 13th,
started during a period of decline and instability in Egypt called the
Second Intermediate Period.[8a]
Historians know little about this period of transition, except that
some rulers were Semitic
foreigners who invaded the Nile delta, and the first of them
was called
Khendjer.[8b]
His real name was written HNZR
equivalent to the Semitic word for ha-nazir
(הנצר) which means the scion,
and not the boar
or pig
as others have stated which would be quite derogatory
for a name. This
ruler came as an invader because, maybe, the famine also affected his
native land at the time and he sought to invade
another region where his followers could settle. The valley of the Nile
offered this
pool of water that was a regional refuge during severe draughts. This
is confirmed by the decoration of the tomb of an official called
Khnumhotep II during the 12th Dynasty. His tomb, in Beni Hasan, shows
immigrants of Semitic character called the "Aamu" (see below). The
Egyptian official on the right side is a superintendant who holds a
papyrus roll on which is written that the number of "Aamu of Shu"
amounts to 37.[8g]

The Aamu immigrants, depicted in Beni Hasan tomb

In
another text, the Tale of Sinuhe, which pre-dates this period, there is
also mention of the Aamu: they are referred as the Asiatic people who
lived in hill lands, thus probably any people east from Egypt, such as
Canaan. One passage of this text is interesting because it compares the
method of burial in Egypt (mummy making for important people) with the
rudimentary burial in Canaan:You
will never die in a foreign land and Aamu [aAmw, Asiatics] will not
bury you. You shall not he placed in a sheep-skin, where your
[stone] mound is made. --- Tale of Sinuhe, decree of Pharaoh for Sinuhe's return to EgyptIn
Northern Canaan (such as what is today Golan and Lebanon), in the times
of the end of Early Bronze to the beginning of Middle Bronze (EB-MB),
they used to bury people under a mound of stone, called tumulus. So the text of Sinuhe is correct on this point, of the burial practice in Canaan compared to Egypt.

It
is interesting to note the
richness of the clothing of these immigrants, with very elaborated
weaved robes as compared to the plain white ones from Egyptians. To be
accepted in Egypt, they surely had to bring with them products or
techniques that were unknown or rare to Egyptians. One of these
techniques may have been the glass making. According to experts, this
technique was used in Asia and in the Levant in particular, and was
brought down to Egypt. The Egyptians learned the technique and used
glass in tools, utensils, jewelery and so on. Most of antique glass
comes from Egypt, because of the good preservation that was there, but
it didn't originate from Egypt. This is why, maybe, the tomb of Beni
Hasan also features these new techniques, or wool weaving and glass
smelting, because it was new to Egyptians in these times of the Medium
Bronze period.

Beni Hasan tomb - glass smelting

When
he went down to Egypt, Abram had his wife Sarai taken
from him because of her beauty. The court of a semitic
Pharaoh probably
thought that he would like to have her as a wife because she was from
the same ethnicity as him. But God
intervened, caused great
plagues (Genesis 12:17) among the court of Egypt and even
in Pharaoh's own house.
Pharaoh called up onto Abram and expelled him with his wife and
followers out of Egypt, and with all his riches. Abram
remained several months in Egypt before returning to Canaan in Hebrew
year 2024 (1736 BC). He left Egypt on 15 Nisan
2024.

According
to historical chronologies of Egypt, the ruling Pharaoh at that time
was Sobekhotep IV, who reigned
for 10 years and, because of his attitude towards Abram and Sarai, he
may have been blessed in his endeavours as he is considered to have
been the most powerful king of the 13th Dynasty.[8c]

There
is an historical proof of these great
plagues on Egypt in that period: the Ipuwer Papyrus,
titled the Dialogue
between Ipuwer and the God of All... Nobody knows for sure
the date of this document because the only sample is a copy made during
the 19th or 18th Dynasty of Egypt (it is preserved in Leiden,
Netherlands). It is generally assumed, by Egyptologists, that the
document dates back from the Second Intermediate Period,[8d] so about
1850-1600 BCE: this would be contemporary with the passage of Abram in
Egypt in 1736 BCE.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Year
2024 – 1736
BCE – The Hyksos and the Ipuwer
Papyrus

The Ipuwer Papyrus
have also been assessed by historians to relate to the invasion of
the Hyksos. They were a foreign people, being described as "pale faced", who came to rule over the
Nile Delta, the most northern part of Egypt. [8e]
The Ipuwer Papyrus
is full of references of the catastrophies that fell upon Egypt during
Abram's passage but also catastrophies that fell upon Egypt at
subsequent periods of these troubled times. This is probably because,
Egyptian chroniclers of later generation looked upon that period of
their history
as one bad period, one catastrophe leading to another, and so they
combined (mixing?) all these natural and surnatural ordeals into a
single tale in the papyrus as if they had one unique cause: the
invasion of the Hyksos. Example of the text
is as follows:

I. [Hyksos invasion?][...] The tribes of the
desert have become Egyptians everywhere. Indeed, the face is
pale [...] Indeed, [the face] is pale; the bowman is ready
[...] Indeed, the women are barren and none conceive.[8f] [...]II. [Plagues at the time of
Abram in Egypt?]Indeed, [hearts] are violent,
pestilence is throughout the land, blood is everywhere, death is not
lacking, and the mummy-cloth speaks even before one comes near it.
[...] Indeed, the river is blood, yet men drink of it. Men
shrink from human beings and thirst after water. towns are
destroyed and Upper Egypt [under control of the Egyptians, unlike Lower
Egypt controlled by Hyksos] has become an empty waste.--- Extracts from the
Admonition of Ipuwer, to see full text online, click here

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Year 2030 – 1730
BCE –
Rebellion against Babylon

After
his return
from Egypt, much wealthier than when he had
left Canaan, Abram settled in the place he was before, a hilly country
of today's Samaria, between
Beth-El and Ai. But his nephew Lot, also wealthy,
opted to settle in the Jordan valley, where the Dead Sea is today,
because of the abundance of water in this area before it was
destroyed with Sodom.

In
the 20th year of the reign of Samsu-Iluna, which
started in 1750 BCE after Hammurabi's death, the rebellion spread to
more remote parts of the empire.
In the land of Canaan, all the cities rejected the allegiance to the
king of
Elam, vassal of Babylon, the so-called king Kedar-LaOmer in the
Bible (Genesis 14:1), who was Kudur-Lagamar
from the Elamite dynasties.
This king called upon the king of Babylon, Amraphel in the
Bible,
for military support. The king of Assyria[11a] and the king of Goyim[11b] joined
them in what was the
campaign of four powerful kings against five small kings who
had
rebelled in the land of
Canaan. They obviously defeated these five kings in the Valley of
Siddim, which used to be where the city of Sodom was, where
the
Dead Sea is today in Israel. This
battle took place in the 20th year after the death of Hammurabi, so in
1730 BCE,
Hebrew year 3020.[12]

After
wrecking the land, they started their return by heading north. Lot,
Abram’s nephew, was among the many captives. But Abram and his
318 trained men born in
his house
(Genesis 14:14), intervened at night and attacked successfully the
large enemy camp to free
the captives, and then they pursued their enemies even further north
(Genesis 14:15-16). This success would not have happened without God's
intervention, because of the big difference in number between Abram's
small army and the combined forces of four powerful kings who just
defeated the alliance of five Canaanite kings. Indeed the expression trained men born in his house
refers to disciples who were spiritually raised by Abram to walk with
God.

Abram
was greeted
upon his return and the Canaanite kings paid tribute to him.
Another king to pay tribute, but who was not in the coalition, was
Melchi-Zedek:

And
Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was
priest of God the Most High. And he blessed him, and said: 'Blessed be
Abram of God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth; and blessed
be
God the Most High, who hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.' And
he gave him a tenth of all. ---
Genesis 14:18-20Melchi-Zedek is
stated in the
Biblical text as being the king of Salem
(the location of the future city of Jerusalem), and that a
high priest to the god almighty
(Genesis
14:18). Presumably
this Melki-Zedek was Shem who, at the time of
these events, was still alive in the land of Canaan, and was about 450
years
old. He was one of the last ancestors still alive and had been a guide
to Abram: he
was the sole surviving witness of the Flood. Shem was the righteous son
of Noah. The above verse mentions wine, and the previous mention of
this man-made drink was in the story of Noah, after the Flood (Genesis
9:20). Presumably Shem had learned from his father how to
make wine. But there is a difference: as Noah made wine for his own
pleasure and got drunk (Genesis 9:21), Shem made wine and bread as a
purpose of divine blessing.

The knowledge of wine making continued to exist in the holy land. In fact the two oldest places (and discovered at this time) of wine production are in Armenia and Egypt: Armenia is where Noah himself or
his son Japhet had established after the Flood, whereas Egypt is
said to have obtained the technique of wine production from Canaan,
presumably from Salem. The name of the city is recorded in ancient
Egyptian tablets so-called the execration texts. These are curses
against Canaanite cities, written on clay pottery and broken as a
ritual. A first publication of these texts was done by German
archaeologist K. Sethe in 1926. More such texts were discovered again
in 1963. These are important findings because they give names of
Canaanite cities of the MB (Middle Bronze) period. Some names are
easily identified such as Rehob, Ashkelon (a mighty EB-era city before
it was conquered by the Sea People), Hazor, and so on. And the city of
Salem is also mentioned as ȥwšȥmm, which has been correctly transcribed by Sethe as Jerusalem
(line f 18). It is the oldest mention of the name Jerusalem found by
archaeology thus far ! Interestingly the name of its king is also
mentioned in the Egyptian text as Yaqir-hammu. The word hammu commonly refers to Asiatic people in early Egyptian sources, whereas Yaqir
is rooted in the word meaning knowledge or wisdom. In the Bible the
king of Salem is Melchi-Zedek which means King of Righteousness.We can
see the connection between righteousness and knowledge/widsom ! With this victory of
Abram, with such a small number of disciples compared to the vast army
of enemies, Shem could acknowledge that Abram was protected and guided
by God and thus was the spiritual heir he had been longing
for.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

About
Year 2031 –
1729
BCE – God makes an alliance with Abraham

In
a series of visions that probably started in Hebrew year 2028 (when
Abram was 78 years old, because this age represents three times the
numerical value of God's name), God appeared to Abram and addressed to
him eight
paroles. In one of them, God announced Himself as follows:

And He said unto him: 'I am
the Lord that brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this
land to inherit it.'--- Genesis 15:7

One
could ask, why did God mention that He brought Abram out of Ur? The
previous mention of this departure from Ur was rather as
follows:

And
Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and
Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth
with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan.--- Genesis 11:31

So
God's statement to Abram was to say that He had been the designer
behind Terah's departure. This explains why Terah had plans to go
specifically to Canaan. God must have addressed Himself to the father
of Abram to leave Ur and go to Canaan. But Terah stopped on his way, in
Charan, and later God revealed Himself to Abram.

But
this
sentence is chiefly a direct reference to the future, when God will
bring the
descendants of Abraham out of Egypt, for example in the following:

'I am the Lord your God who
brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of
Canaan, to be your God.' ---
Leviticus 25:28

In
this vision, or this series of visions, God told Abram
that his
offspring will be form a big nation but that they will go
through some ordeal:

And
it came to pass, that, when the sun was going down, a deep
sleep fell upon Abram; and, behold, a dread, even a great darkness,
fell upon
him.
And He said to Abram: "Know
for certainty that your offspring will be stranger in a land that will
not
belong to them; and they will be enslaved and oppressed for four
hundred years.
And also
the nation that will make them work, I will judge it. And then they
will go
out, with great wealth.
And you, you will join your fathers in peace
and will
be buried in a good old age.
And the fourth generation will return
here,
because the iniquity of the Amorite will not be full until then."--- Genesis 15:12-16

The
vision above is symbolized by the darkness
that
Abram’s descendants will have to endure before becoming the great
nation that
God promised. We can assume that God was holding some form of
punishment for Abram
because
he left the land where God took him in order to seek refuge in Egypt
during a famine: it was a lack of trust that God would look
after
him. His stay in Egypt did not actually last long, and therefore the
famine must
not have been so enduring. All the more a reason for God to hold it
against Abram: his offspring will suffer darkness before
awaking into a
nation. This will happen after the last night they will spend in Egypt,
a
Passover night from the 14th to the 15th of the month of Nissan. And,
in the morning, they will walk out from Egypt in
daylight. There was
night, there was day…
The awakening of the Hebrew nation, during the Exodus, will echo the
days of the Creation. But this day for the nation that Abram
will
beget will not come before a period of 400 years, as God had announced.
The number 400 will always be a mark of darkness
or bad omen for the Hebrew people across their History, as we shall see
later in this work. But it is also a duration of ordeal before a redemption arrives. The other fact is that it will be the fourth generation
of Hebrews who dwelled in Egypt that will come out of Egypt at the time
of the Exodus, as we shall see.

To
comfort Abram after such somehow negative vision, God made an alliance
with
him and repeated His promise:

In
that day, God made an alliance with Abram by saying: "To
your offspring I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the
great
river, the Euphrates River."--- Genesis 15:18

This vision
sets the alliance that God made with Abram and is traditionally called
the Brit Bein Habetarim
(the Covenant of the Pieces).[9] But there are two schools
of thought: some believe that this vision happened in year 2023 or
others in year 2018. But
in fact, the text doesn't mention it precisely, for example by stating
how old was Abram at the time. And the vision may in fact have
been a series of visions that spread over a period of time, because the
text mentions eight times "God said to Abram": if it had been one
single event, or day, would the text repeat so many times that "God
said"? This vision is
however mentioned after the war of the kings, thus we can assume the
vision(s) started no
earlier than the year 2030, a consideration that voids
both schools of thought ! However, it doesn't really matter
when
it took place, and this
is why the text doesn't offer further detail of timing. Because what is
important is what the vision said: the reference is
the verse
Genesis 15:7 which says the Lord that brought you out of
Ur of the Chaldees and that draws a clear parallel
with the future Exodus with the
Lord that brought the Hebrews out of the land
of Egypt.
The two events are therefore to be understood as directly connected.
This connection is not just with this particular mention
but through many other details, such as the fact that God stroke Egypt
with plagues, the hurry with which Abram was told to leave
Egypt, pushed out by Pharaoh and followed by his soldiers until the
border of the country, the fact that he was given a lot of
wealth when he was sent off, and more. So it is
important to remember that the year of the Exodus is
not derived from the imprecise year(s) of the Brit
Bein Habetarim but from the exact year when Abram left Egypt.

Year
2034 – 1726 BCE – Birth of
Ishmael

This
important Biblical text is immediately followed by the story of
Ishmael,
the
son born to Agar the Egyptian maidservant of Sarai that she had pushed
onto her
husband to give him an offspring. It occurred 10 years after Abram came
to
dwell in the land of Canaan, after his return from Egypt (Genesis
16:3). He had
brought Agar the Egyptian maid from there.

Ishmael
was born when Abram was 86 years old (Genesis 16:16),
so it was the Hebrew year 2034 (1726 BCE). As he was a son of Abram, he
benefited from
the blessing that God gave to his offspring and, to this day, his
descendants indeed dwell in the region that God promised to
Abram, from the
river of Egypt to the great
river, the Euphrates River.

But
after the birth of Ishmael, the servant Agar lost
respect for Sarai, because the latter was still barren. So Abram's wife
had to make her leave.

In
the wilderness, water came to an end and Agar thought her child would
die. An angel appeared to
Agar and convinced her to come back to Abram and Sarai and told her
about her son:

"He
will be a wild person, his arm against all, and
everyone’s arm against his, and he shall dwell in the face of all his
brothers."---
Genesis 16:12

[2] To see the
translation by Prof. Martha Roth, 1995, online, click here.

[3]The reader could notice that
the word is actuallyEllil, not the
translated Enlil,
and that Ellil sounds much closer to the Biblical name
Elohim, the God of the Bible who created “heavens and earth”.

[5]There
is a similarity between the Hebrew names of Arpachshad and Ur-Kasdim
that doesn't transpire in English translations; Arpachshad is written אַרְפַּכְשַׁד while Ur-Kasdim
(meaning Ur of the Chaldeans) is written אוּר
כַּשְׂדִּים ;
the following letters are in the same sequence: א
ר כ ש ד
if we remove the plural of Kasdim (Chaldeans) and some later
deviation of the name Ur which was not in the original name; the name
Chaldea is directly taken from the name Arpachshad

[6]
Abram will explain in Genesis 20:12: And
moreover she [Sarai] is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father,
but not the daughter of my mother; and so she became my wife.
It is interesting to note, on this topic, that the argument advanced by
Abram is backed by Genetics... Abram' gender gene was of the kind X1Y,
X1 from his mother and Y from his father.
Sarai was of gender gene X2X, X2
from her mother and X from Abram's common father; but since Abram was a
boy, he inherited gene Y from his father, while Sarai inherited gene X
from the same father; so there would be no possible genetic issues for
Abram and Sarai's children, with an association of X1Y
and X2X[7]The ancient city of Charran
is located in today's Harran, on the Turkish side near the border with
Syria, at coordinates 37oN 39oE.
It is a very large fertile plain, the first one that travellers would
come across when coming from the dryer Mesopotamian region.

[8a]
For a synopsis of the Second Intermediate Period, see the page on Wikipedia.

[8e]
About the Hyksos,
their name in Greek, they have been described as foreign invaders, and
at times, invaders from the desert; their name, in Egyptian, is Heqa Khasheshet
whose name, if derived from a Semitic root, would relate to the word keshet which means bow.. The Hyksos
were probably skilled bowmen and, in addition, they brought to Egypt
the usage of chariot in warfare. No doubt that such technological
advantages would have enabled them to defeat the previous dynasty and
invade part of the land.

[8f]
This calamity may also be relevant to the time of Abraham in Egypt
because of the parallel between two verses: in Genesis 12:17 it is said
that God plagued Pharaoh and
his house because of Sarai, Abram's wife, whereas in
Genesis 20:18 For God
closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah
Abraham's wife.
So the plague that struck the houses of both Pharaoh and Abimelech was
that the women became barren.

[9]
This vision is comparable to another one that Prophet Daniel
interpreted in later years, during the captivity in Babylon; to check
it, click here

[11a]
In Hebrew, this king is called Ariochand this name may be identified as Erishum II from the Old Assyrian Period; this dynasty was earlier founded by Erishum I, son of Ilu-shuma, a name which sounds similar to the name of the dynasty mentioned in the Biblical text: Arioch king of Ellasar (Genesis 14:1)

[11b]
In Hebrew, the word Goyim means generically Nations, but it may refer
here to the Gutians who were one of the people of Southern Mesopotamia
under the control of Babylon,
in the region where Sumer used to be before the Flood